Making connections

Wind energy effort thwarted by Arkansas objections

Ifa windmill in the middle section of the nation makes energy that has no way to get to the higher-demand, more populated areas of the nation, what good is it?

A large swath of the nation’s midsection is THE place for wind energy — plains that extend for miles and miles and little to block energyproducing breezes and gusts. But that’s not where most consumers of energy are. They are out west and east, in many places comfortably served by other not-so-popular energy sources, such as coal or the nation’s collection of nuclear plants.

None of that energy gets anywhere without transmission lines, many of them from more traditional energy sources having been in existence for decades. They’re big and, in a state that touts itself as a natural, they’re ugly. Many supporters of renewable energy — wind and solar — face a clash of values once they realize their preferred sources for energy production require cutting hundreds-of-mile swaths of environmental disruption.

Clean Line Energy Partners of Houston refers to a lack of transmission lines as a “serious challenge” to the promise of renewable energy. The company has a collection of projects under way in an attempt to connect the power-producing windmills in the heart of the country to the places where demand is great.

Arkansas is caught in the middle. Or was, until a recent announcement that the Department of Energy was cutting ties to a $2.5 billion Clean Line Energy Partners project known as the Plains and Eastern Clean Line. The transmission project was originally designed to transmit wind-produced energy from the Oklahoma panhandle to electricity buyers in Tennessee. The 700-mile line would have cut across Arkansas. Resistance to the line was strong, among residents and political leaders in the state. Arkansas’ congressional delegation praised the Energy Department’s decision as a “victory for states’ rights.” At first none, then later a little, of the energy produced would have benefited anyone in Arkansas. Arkansas landowners didn’t have a strong enough voice in the review of the project, the state’s federal representatives said.

Some have said the project is dead, but the company continues a push to connect the dots. And it has other transmission lines it’s pressing forward on. The company has hired former Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a private attorney, to argue today to the Missouri Supreme Court that utility regulators wrongly rejected a path for its Grain Belt Express Clean Line through the Show Me State.

We’re glad to see Arkansas won’t have to fight the federal government in an effort to protect its soil. The state and its people ought to have a strong voice when any project is going to create a major impact here.

There is, however, the reality that the strongest wind-driven energy exists in a place where few folks live. Unless populations of the larger cities of the east and west are going to relocate to the nation’s heartland, transmission lines are a reality of the push for sustainable wind energy.

Arkansas successfully delivered a message that “you can’t get there from here.” But one has to wonder how sustainable that resistance can be as the nation continues its drive toward cleaner energy.